Prada Gets Its First Permanent Exhibition, in the Milan Arcade Where It Began in 1913
Pradasphere, the exhibition Prada once took to London, Hong Kong and Shanghai, has become the first permanent exhibition dedicated to the house. It fills the piano nobile of Prada Galleria in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the arcade where Mario Prada and his brother Martino opened the first Fratelli Prada shop in 1913.
The show traces more than a century from that founding to the present, drawing on the archive and on decades of Prada's work across art, architecture, film, culture and sport. Many of the pieces are on view for the first time.
Three episodes
The exhibition runs in three episodes: Origins, Evolution and Perspectives. Origins begins with Mario Prada, who sourced fine leathers, silver, silk and crystal from across Europe and beyond and turned them into oggetti di lusso, objects of luxury. It follows Miuccia Prada, who took over the family business in the mid-1970s. Her first designs were handbags in industrial nylon, a gesture that questioned what luxury was made of, and her partnership with Patrizio Bertelli turned a regional company into a global brand.
Evolution starts with her first collection, in 1988. "One of the reasons I started doing clothes was because I couldn't find anything to wear," Miuccia Prada says. Against an era of excess and ostentation, the clothes went spare: plain silhouettes, austere palettes, materials that unsettled accepted ideas of luxury. Perspectives covers the four decades of work on the women's wardrobe since, a design process she has described as inherently contradictory.
The rooms
The route moves through rooms that change character one after another. Some are dark and formal, with moire walls, dark wood paneling and herringbone floors, where a tall cylindrical vitrine holds bags. Others are painted sage and pale green over black and white checkerboard marble, with clothes on clear acrylic stands and full skirts hung from a coffered ceiling. In the lighter rooms, tall windows look straight onto the Galleria.
A rail of black and grey coats hangs against a glowing gold honeycomb wall. Accessories are laid out on olive velvet like specimens in a framed case, and a lit wall shelf lines up bags, shoes and books.
In a room with speckled grey walls, mannequins stand in rows on grated steel plinths, and a white spacesuit on its own plinth faces them. Elsewhere, a pair of sandals has uppers cut into red and yellow flames.
One room is lined in ochre velvet, with armchairs, a white hood hanging from a flexible metal hose with a screen inside, and walls of screens showing Prada images. Another is lined floor to ceiling with wooden shelves and drawers holding books.
Before Milan
The first Pradasphere ran in London and Hong Kong in 2014. Pradasphere II opened at the Start Museum in Shanghai in December 2023, built on stories selected by creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, with more than 400 physical and digital artifacts. The design studio 2x4 staged it as a magazzino, a warehouse of industrial shelving lined with pink silk velvet. It closed in January 2024.
Pradasphere has been open since September 23, 2026, at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, 20121 Milan, daily from 10 am to 8 pm. Entry is by registration on Prada's website.
